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An image is worth a thousand words. This is even truer when it comes to moving pictures. Written content in many cases is not sufficient to gain attention in the world wide web. Videos have become a matter of course and people no longer only share them on YouTube but also on social networks such as Facebook. Have you ever thought about using video for your website? We have five reasons to show you that this is actually a good idea.

Videos Convey Content Easily

Complex correlations are not easy to convey. Videos can simplify the task considerably. Long articles tend to turn off a lot of people even though they might be enriched with images and charts.

Animations and other motion picture elements not only help support understanding but also leaven the atmosphere. Videos need not be produced with a lot of effort and money. Videos that explain complex correlations or technical details benefit from getting enriched with additional material. Stock videos are a great supplement here. Stock providers such as Bigstock, originally being known for their large portfolios of stock photography, have extended their offerings to cover video in high resolutions too.

Most of the portfolio is well suited to deliver the imagery around the spoken word. Besides generic clips, there is also material covering recent topics and events.

Should you want to create a video related to the city of Berlin, you will find clips of several buildings and places of Berlin. Should any video belong to a temporal context dates are attached, and short introductions help understand this integration. That makes it easy to gather fitting material. Combine this with your own and produce a video with manageable effort.

Videos Extend the Reach of Your Content

One of the best reasons for video is the massive gain in reach that can be achieved. Videos typically attract more visitors to a website. Besides having more visitors, these also do tend to stay longer. If your videos have a particular quality, you should consider adding them to more channels such as YouTube.

Especially younger people spend a lot of time on the video platform from Mountain View. Witty and entertaining clips gain more attention than simple texts, even in cases where these texts have been thoroughly equipped with compelling imagery and other static elements.

Having evolved from specialized platforms videos have become important media on Facebook and other social networks too. While links to article pages are shared, links to video content are shared and commented way more often.

Stock material will not substitute your good idea. You will have to have that yourself. And stock material will not be sufficient as the sole content of your video. But don’t hesitate to add one sequence or another as you neither can nor need to shoot all of the clips by yourself.

Videos are not limited to any particular use case. Business websites can benefit from motion pictures also. Original content is great for brand communication. Your message can be conveyed much more efficiently through topically fitting, motivating, entertaining or typifying video sequences.

Videos Trigger Emotion and Strengthen Engagement

Images can evoke emotion. Videos can evoke even stronger feelings. This is one of the strengths of moving images. Of course it is not always fitting but using laughing faces, happy children, and cute animals will always convey a positive mood.

You can certainly express sad or depressive moods in the same way. This depends on the topic. Especially dark feelings are not easy to transport. It is way easier to choose professional material to circumvent this difficulty. Another advantage is that you need not care for permissions and other licensing issues.

Be aware that emotion can easily be overdone. Make sure to keep a balanced dose. That said there is no doubt that using emotional clips have the potential to create engagement and establish a bond between a brand and its visitors.

Videos Allow Your Visitors to Interact

Videos on the internet are no longer the simple moving pictures that they were in the past. Thanks to YouTube and also HTML5 they have become interactive media. YouTube, for example, allows you to add links to other targets right along the timeline of any given video.

With HTML5 and JavaScript, there are a plethora of options. You cannot only place the mentioned links to different targets. You can even change the content of the surrounding website according to the playback position of the embedded clip. By way of example, you could change the background color according to the running scene.

Explanatory texts can be shown in context to the video. These interactive clips help find orientation on a website. Complex information can be conveyed in a comprehensive and entertaining manner.

Videos Can be Used as Design Elements

Just like images videos need not be used as autonomous content solely. In times of discreet design – think of the recent Flat Design craze – large images are preferred to counter an otherwise subdued layout.

Hero images need not be images but can also be created using moving pictures. Subtle video sequences that do not disturb the design of the foreground are great as eye catchers. They draw attention and convey emotions much better than your standard static design could.

Conclusion

Whether you like it or not videos are here to stay. A good idea and reasonable effort are enough to produce attractive videos. Stock material such as Bigstock has on offer extends what you can achieve.

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Dieter Petereit is a veteran of the web with over 25 years of experience in the world of IT. As soon as Netscape became available he started to do what already at that time was called web design and has carried on ever since. Two decades ago he started writing for several online publications, some well, some lesser known. You can meet him over on Google+.

Interesting post. It’s true that video is a good way to convey your message and hold users attention but you should make sure that video is there for a reason and not just for the sake of it. Also, the video should be of great quality.

Great read. As A web design and development company, we enjoyed this post and can say that you nailed it to the cross. Websites with background videos as well as a div containing full page video are really in trend. Really a innovative post. Thanks for sharing.

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